Corinth board alters intersection plan

CORINTH – The Corinth Board of Aldermen voted Monday to retain access to Liddon Lake Road at the traffic light where U.S. 72 and South Parkway intersect.
The aldermen voted 4-2 in a special meeting to support the wishes of homeowners on Liddon Lake Road as well as officials representing AutoZone who made the request. The board directed engineers to resubmit a redesign for a construction project at the intersection to the Mississippi Department of Transportation.
An approximately $300,000 grant from MDOT to the city to add a turn lane on Parkway from the north onto U.S. 72 previously stipulated that the added lane would require closing Liddon Lake Road’s access at the traffic light, a five-point intersection. A proposed alternate outlet for Liddon Lake Road to U.S. 72 would be constructed several hundred yards to the east, beside an AutoZone store.
Alderman A.L. “Chip” Wood, in offering the motion to submit a redesign with the grant request to MDOT to include only the lane widening and traffic signal changes, said he was persuaded that it was best to make no changes on Liddon Lake Road.
Mayor Tommy Irwin noted that the MDOT grant for work at the intersection could be jeopardized by a change, and he had pushed hard for MDOT to make an investment in Corinth’s streets.
The board meeting room held more than a dozen people concerned about the issue, who heard presentations from engineer Jim Epps of Cook Coggin Engineers, which serves as the city’s engineering firm, and John E. “Eddie” Robinson, a traffic signal engineer with MDOT.
Epps said the proposed change to reroute Liddon Lake Road would improve traffic flow and improve safety at the intersection.
Robinson concurred, saying that eliminating the seconds in the cycling of the traffic signal that allows traffic direct access to Liddon Lake Road would expedite traffic flow along U.S. 72.
The other two aspects of the three-part project – to add the turn lane on Parkway and to install fixed-arm traffic signals – could be executed without making any changes to the Liddon Lake Road signalized access, but there is a question whether MDOT would be willing to fund the project if all three elements are not included.
lena.mitchell@journalinc.com